No More "Wide"; Here's Why

About a year ago, I decided to make all of my novels available in every major ebook store. In the self-publishing industry, this action is referred to as “going wide.” That is versus being exclusive with the Amazon store. I had two reasons for making that decision.

First, I finally bought into the narrative the Amazon wants to control the world and shut down every other online store. That, of course, means Jeff Bezos must be the Antichrist and Christians should have nothing to do with him. I even wrote a blog post where I smack-talked author exclusivity with Amazon, and particularly their Kindle Unlimited program.

I bit the hand that had been feeding me, and it came back to bite me. I've discovered since that sometimes, exclusivity is a self-published author's best friend. More on that in a minute.

The second, and more compelling, reason that I went wide was that I learned that the Apple iBooks store had decided to make free digital (AI) narration available for authors… as long as their books were in their store.

I’ve been hearing for some time that audiobooks are the new ebook, that you’re only playing house if you publish ebooks but don’t create an audiobook for every novel that you write. You’re not “professional.” You won’t make “real” money.

But for most authors, handing a thousand bucks over to a voice actor to narrate a book is a financial risk we can’t afford to take.

So, I thought, great! Free audiobooks of my novels! I can finally do this self-publishing thing right.

And, I hoped, make a lot more money than I ever had.

Reality check.

Long story short, as far as I can tell, I’ve had zero sales of any of my novels in audio form from Apple. And that was even after getting a lot of downloads of my free Christmas novels. On top of that, during the past few months the money I made from the non-Amazon stores hasn’t even come close to equating what I used to make from the Kindle Unlimited fund.

Somebody might tell me I haven’t waited long enough. Or done enough promotions.

Maybe not. Truth be told, I don’t want to. I don’t want to do the leg work to become known enough so that I can make a decent income from the twenty percent of the population who purchase ebooks from a non-Amazon store.

“But I’ve boycotted Amazon!”

Some people will tell me (have told me, as a matter of fact) that Amazon is evil, and that anyone who goes exclusive with them is selling their soul to the devil.

Well. I hope that person grows all of their own food, grows or raises plants or livestock from which they make their own clothing, doesn’t own a car, doesn’t use a bank or credit union, is totally off the grid with energy and power, and never buys anything from any kind of store, because I wouldn’t want them to be a hypocrite.

Amazon is far from being the only imperfect corporation out there. It’s just one of the biggest, which is why it’s gotten bad press.

I’m going back to basics.

More truth: my life was simpler and less stressful when I was almost exclusive with Amazon. I say “almost” because all the first novels in my series are available wide, as are the boxed sets for each series.

However, from now on, all of my novels that are NOT the first in a series will be exclusive with Amazon, which means they can either be purchased individually from Amazon, or read through the Kindle Unlimited program.

I’ve already created paperback and hardcover versions for each novel, as well. They are priced so I earn around two dollars per sale of each print novel, which is actually less than what I make from ebook sales.

In addition, Amazon has just rolled out its own virtual audiobook narration program. The voices aren’t quite the quality as those of Apple, but they’re good enough. Within a few days – say, by the 20^th of January – all of my novels will be available in audiobook format in the Amazon store. I’ve priced them all at $7.99, just to keep things simple.

I’m done playing everybody else’s game. I want to enjoy writing, and I can’t do that if I’m stressing out over all the marketing rules.

So I’ve decided that I’m done trying to follow everybody’s rules.

It’s like I heard one six-figure romance author say: Kindle Unlimited is like the biggest library in the world, available around the world, and on whatever device you read books, there’s a Kindle app that allows you to read Kindle books on it.

I wish I would have stuck to that advice, and not wasted a ton of time last March following yet another shiny object that turned out to be fool's gold. 

The grass on the other side of the fence is not always as green as the cows are claiming.